Workaholic 25 Points

Defender of the galaxy 100 Points

Secret Medal ????? Points

Author Comments

Defend your home planet and find the source of an interplanetary attack in this action / strategy hybrid.

Fight against enemy planets in side-view in increasingly difficult action battles and collect resources to upgrade your planet in a round based exploration mode.

The first battles in this game might seem rather easy, but I doubt you will be able to beat the game in your first attempt. You will have to be content to develop the right strategy to make it to the end.

Campaign progress is saved automatically between turns, you can continue a running campaign later from the main menu.

The game has a fully interactive tutorial to get you started in no time.

German translation is available in the options menu / Deutsche Übersetzung kann in den Optionen aktiviert werden!

Changelog V 1.11

Fixed a possible dead end in the long tutorial where it was not possible to buy guns in the upgrade screen

Added skip button to credits

Added final Level-Up Screen after the credits

Added self destruct-button: Hit “s” on your keyboard 5 times to blow up your own planet.

The Android version now has achievements and leaderboards with Google Play Games integration, so if that’s your jam, I’d suggest you check it out. =)

This was a great game. Finally finished it today after 4 (though probably a few more) deaths. If you'll believe it, I first played this game when it was front paged nearly two years ago. I had a great time but I died and then the months flew by. I finally got a bit of time and after dying a bit more, got distracted, more months went by, and I beat it today. Albeit on the easiest difficulty. Anyway, I almost wish I beat it at the time but for some reason the long time makes it seem a little worth it. I really like the names thaat you gave to the important planets which really hammered home the ridiculosity of it all. It was a great simple game, and although it could've gone into greater detail, I won't fault you for it. I'll be looking forward to a possible sequel, or simply play this game again from time to time.

Ignoring the HOLY PHYSICS BATMAN problems with the concept, which could be a doctoral thesis in and of itself...

The gameplay is fun! The timing and aiming mechanic rewards skill while necessitating economy, the stats are clearly and quantifiably explained (which seems like a no-brainer, but soooo many games just don't bother).

The selection of weapons and their different functions was cool. I would would have liked perhaps more player involvement in the recovery and implementation of weapons rather than a "it just happens!" kind of deal. Artifacts were a cool perk system, I'd have liked maybe a more visual component to go with it, at least an item name or what have you.

I found the military/scientist dynamic interesting, but it wasn't explored very much and they essentially provided the same gameplay function, i.e. side quests. The planet as a medium and your position as the commander seems to beg for a more political aspect of the game; an example might be the planet's response to devastation from an attack, or response to a discovery that increases their contentment. Perhaps things like a population mechanic, just spitballing here, but repeated devastating planetary attacks (as the opening indicated they were) would wreak havoc on infrastructure and population, and this might require some hard planetary survival choices, like forced repopulation programmes, totalitarianism vs. civil unrest, propaganda, etc.. Something with continuity. Maybe that's not this game, I dunno, but I think it could be an interesting facet of a sequel.

I think that some of the weapon sounds could be better. The machine gun, for instance, sounds pretty scrawny for a cannon that shoots shells the size of the Chicxulub asteroid. The music is nice and atmospheric, though I think the music could be more climactic for different encounters. It might also be interesting to add moons and planetoids as your smaller encounters, and have more salient artificial aspects of higher-level planets. Perhaps some story-based recognition of the fact that you've annihilated a whole planet might be good too, to remind us that we're not just playing "big gun balls gone rogue!".

Thanks for playing & the detailed review! I think you are the first person to object the game's ridiculous handling of physics...there are many, many logical flaws to be found here, but I think the game gets away with it since it never takes itself too seriously in that regard.

You named a lot of features, aspects and ideas where I agree with you that the game would benefit from them it they were in the game, for example a weapon research system, even if it is just a dialog option like "Which weapon should we research next?". Also I would have loved to make the perks / artifacts more interesting visually, so you can enjoy it more when they kick in in battle. Things like those did not make it into the game because development was already dragging on for a long time while I still had hundreds of ideas what you could add to the game, but I set myself a deadline because I feared I would never be able to finish it. If I do a sequel or a similar complex game, I should now be able to plan ahead better to decide beforehand that the features that will make it into the game will add up to a more balanced package.

I also agree with you on the sound effects and music, these both could be better. I have not learned / tried yet how to make my own sound effects so I tried to make my best use of the soundFX that are published in public domain on freesound.org. I learned the basics of music creation alongside while I developed the game, which might explain a bit, why the battle music tracks all sound like cheap dutch house music ;-) But I have just started here, and I hope I will be able to improve here as well for my future games.

Great game off the back but it does have a few flaws I don't know (i.e don't feel like looking for) if you have addressed.

-Planet directed upgrades. E.G: increase/decrease rotation speed, in battle healing, special powerups.
-The Upgrade/line move is a little unbalanced. I have one gun thats slightly upgraded and now I have to go against enemies with several weapons better then mine for free.
-ability to increase height as well as map length.
-nice to have visiual changes to upgrades maybe?

Thanks for playing and rating! I think your observations are all fresh and have not yet been brought up:

-Planet directed upgrades / special powerups are partially included in the game with the damage / defense / reload bonuses and some of the perks gained by the artifacts are planet-related as well. I could imagine making a separate shop for these bonuses in a possible sequel for the game.

-The upgrade line should directly be tied to your planet's worth in weapons and upgrades: If you fight a planet near the yellow "money incentive line", the enemy planet should have equipment comparable to your planet (besides guns you have not researched yet, of course).

If you haven't discovered it yet: You can increase the map length already when playing with a "custom" difficulty setting. It would be possible technically to increase the map height as well since the map is already dynamically created, but it might bring in a bit of a balancing problem: It gives you more / less green planets / artifacts / quests as you progress to the right. But since custom mode is "anything goes" already, I think I might add this in a future update.

-I'd really love to have visual changes for the guns (and maybe for gun health as well). It would not only be a nice visual detail, but it would also allow you to determine at first sight how "strong" the enemy gun is. I have not yet added them in because it would take a bit of effort to create different gun graphics for each and every upgrade, and if I would have that ready, the game file would most likely be too big to upload it on NewGrounds :-/ (I'm close to the limit already....) If you or anybody has an idea how to represent the upgrades in a "cheap" (effort & file size-wise) way, please let me know via PM!